God of War is outstanding in all ways, but most important, its just so much fun to play.
The Cinematics are outstandind in God of War. The characters' clothes and bodies move together smoothly down to the last arm hair. The combat movies smoothly and never slows up or lags in the least bit. The huge world looks amazing with a gorgeous variety of colors and textures to make it look more real than anything on the PS2.
All enemies and characters make some kind of sound, and they all blend well to keep things fresh and exciting. Enemies scream as you slice off their limbs and Kratos screams with fury as he launches a foe off of an endless cliff. The sountrack truly keeps players entertained beyond the gameplay.
The controls are simple to learn but fun and slightly challenging to master. There is always a new combo that you magically find yourself performing, and it takes a long time to find them all. The only problem with the controls is that you have to press L3 and R3 at the same time to activate the Rage of the Gods power, which is simple enough but sometimes during intense fighting the player might slip and active it, wasting it. This is only a slight down to the game, and really isn't bad at all.
The gameplay itself is addicting and fun. There are only a very few select spots where the game gets a little tough and frustrating, but they are overshadowed by the perfection of the overall difficulty. Expect to see the game over screen a few times, but not enough to make you turn the game off with sweaty palms. There are always new enemies to kill in a new world to explore, and killing them is huge fun. Magic can be unlocked and mixed in with hundreds of sword-technique combinations to rack up combos of hundreds of kills. The more kills, the more points are awarded which can be allocated to one of the two weapons, or to one of the four magics, upgrading them to make them even more powerful. The gameplay, while repetitive, never gets old or boring, and you may find yourself playing through the game two, three, or maybe four times. There is much to unlock in the bonus section inlcuding behind the scenes art books and secret costumes for Kratos. All of this makes the game easily replayable.
God of War is a legend in the hack-and-slash genre, mastering graphics and gameplay to make a fun, addicting experience that will be remembered until the end of gaming.